


Together, Alone

by scouringsandstone



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Blood, Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Shock, Trauma, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 01:10:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10374453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scouringsandstone/pseuds/scouringsandstone
Summary: The world carried on, but how could it?





	

He needed to make himself a drink. That's what they'd said.

Cowley had already forced a few swigs from his hip flask down him, but they had told him he needed a hot drink, something with plenty of sugar in it.

And so Doyle found himself in the break room, holding the kettle, but he couldn't seem to remember how to make a cup of tea. His hands shook. He put the kettle down before he dropped it and leant against the counter. 

Bodie's things were still scattered around the room. Yesterday's shirt slung over the back of the settee, his mug resting on the work surface beside Doyle's. As though he might be back at any minute. As though nothing had changed. 

Through the small window, Doyle could hear the hum of the early evening traffic going by. That was what he should have been doing now: driving home with Bodie, making plans for the night, drinking wine and eating take-aways before falling into bed, only to get up the next morning and do it all over again. That was what they always did, what they were always going to do. 

He pictured Bodie that way for a second. Bodie laughing in the car on their morning commute, Bodie waking up beside him and pulling the duvet up over his head to block out the sun. But the memories gave way to the image of Bodie's face the last time Doyle had seen it. Still and strange, not his Bodie at all. 

The realisation that he would never see his Bodie again hit him so suddenly that his stomach lurched and he had to stumble over to the sink to throw up. Shock, he supposed. He'd seen it happen to other people plenty of times before. He ran both of the taps, splashed some cold water over his face, then sank to the floor, shaking harder than before.

Outside, cars zipped past, shops closed and pubs opened. The world carried on, but how could it? How could anything go on?

The tears that Doyle had managed to hold back finally spilled out and he drew his knees up to his chest, hid his face in his arms and cried. Choked and sobbed and keened in a way he couldn't remember ever having done before. He cried until his head ached and his throat hurt and he didn't think he would be able to breathe. A part of him no longer wanted to.

He wanted the world to go away, to be left in that moment forever... 

It startled him when the door opened. He wasn't sure how much time had passed, but the room was dark now except for the light from the doorway where Cowley stood.

"Doyle," Cowley said with an uncharacteristic gentleness, and it was only then that he realised the old man knew. Perhaps he'd known all along.

Doyle couldn't answer, just sniffed and scrubbed at his face with his hands, sore eyes slowly adjusting, but Cowley stepped inside anyway.

"Go and get yourself cleaned up, lad," he said.

Doyle looked down at the patches of dried blood on his tee-shirt from where he'd clung to his dead partner long after his failed attempts at resuscitation. Until he had been dragged away, shouting and struggling, and driven back to HQ. He remembered trying to climb into the back of the ambulance along with the covered stretcher, but Murphy had gotten the better of him. The others had taken his gun from its holster and sent him upstairs to get a cup of tea, and he had done as they had told him, helpless.

Cowley watched him get to his feet.

"All right." Cowley said. Neither a question nor a statement, but perhaps a reassurance. That it would be again, one day.

Doyle nodded mutely and headed off down the corridor. He wasn't so sure.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a Crowded House song of the same name.


End file.
